The State of Search: Additional Broad Core Updates

Google released a broad core update on July 1, which is said to be a continuation of the June 2021 Core Update. According to our algorithm sensors and chatter across the SEO community, this update led to rather immediate changes in the SERPs that were felt significantly throughout the update’s rollout, completed on July 12th. Like previous core updates, the July 2021 Core Update has a global impact. 

Some sites that experienced drops following the June 2021 Core Update saw improvements after the July 2021 Core Update in what may have been a reversal of some previously made changes. 

Google News & Tips  

• Crawl Budget - Consider noindexing site pages that offer little value to reserve Google’s crawl budget for more important landing pages. A ‘noindex’ tag tells search engines not to include the page in search results.  
• Customer Support - In a recent blog post, Google recommends that businesses share more information regarding how customers can get in touch and access customer support. Consider a dedicated landing page and offer several forms of contact (phone, email, form submission, etc.).
• Indexing New Content - Use Google Search Console’s URL submission tool, link to new pages from important landing pages--i.e. The home page--and maintain the overall quality of your site to help expedite the indexing of new site pages. Remember, Google wants to quickly display sites offering quality content and excellent user experiences high in the search results. 

What this means for you

As we continue to analyze the impact of Google’s back-to-back core updates on our client sites and those of competitors, we recommend the following if your site experienced a drop in organic traffic and or rankings following the most recent broad core update: Evaluate your site as a whole and implement site-wide updates to further enhance quality and user experience with a focus on content and E-A-T signals. Our recommendation to review Google’s guidelines following core updates remains the same since the previous month.